The obituaries of Mario Cuomo are filled with words about his 1984 speech at Notre Dame on religion and politics, but they seem to miss the fact that Cuomo’s approach of separating in-house debates of what is and isn’t moral from debates over how to act politically in the world has not only penetrated the thinking (and actions) of his conservative opponents, but also is the same approach being carried out by Pope Francis.

If you weren’t eagerly checking the bishops’ blog for their feelings on your health insurance, you may not have known last week was Catholic Schools Week! I generally don’t participate in the bishops’ weeks (or fortnights), but I think this is an ideal moment to highlight the proud history of advocacy for contraceptive access at Catholic-affiliated Universities — which is relevant to all those lawsuits that won’t be going away now that His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan has spoken.

After the invitation went out to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to speak at the annual “Al Smith Dinner” — a huge Roman Catholic charitable fundraiser in New York City, Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been getting slammed by the Catholic right wing. Given how the USCCB has been ratcheting up the rhetoric against Democrats (especially Roman Catholic Democrats) for years, no one should be surprised at this reaction. As the prophet said, those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

The Department of Health and Human Services instituted a rule from the Affordable Care Act that ensured all employer-provided health insurance plans would cover reproductive and preventive services with no co-pay. This included a wide range of preventive services and not just birth control. But religiously-affiliated institutions, mostly Catholic ones, objected, even though an accommodation place the mandate on insurers and not the institutions. Not satisfied, the institutions are suing HHS.